uple of machine shops, set up an assembly shop
and a set of plyboard-partitioned offices in a vacant warehouse just
outside the reactor area, and tried to start work, only to run into the
almost interminable procedural disputes and jurisdictional wranglings of
the sort which he privately labeled "bureau bunk". It was only now that
he was ready to begin work on the reactors.

He sat at his desk, in the inner of three successively smaller offices
on the second floor of the converted warehouse, checking over a
symbolic-logic analysis of a relay system and, at the same time,
sharpening a pencil, his knife paring off tiny feathery shavings of
wood. He was a tall, sparely-built, man of indeterminate age, with
thinning sandy hair, a long Gaelic upper lip, and a wide, half-humorous,
half-weary mouth; he wore an open-necked shirt, and an old and shabby
leather jacket, to the left shoulder of which a few clinging flecks of
paint showed where some military emblem had been, long ago. While his
fingers worked with the jackknife and his eyes traveled over the page of
closely-written symbols, his mind was reviewing the eight different ways
in which one of the efficient but treacherous Doernberg-Giardano
reactors could be allowed to reach critical mass, and he was wondering
if there might not be some unsuspected ninth way. That was a possibility
which always lurked in the back of his mind, and lately it had been
giving him surrealistic nightmares.

"Mr. Melroy!" the box on the desk in front of him said suddenly, in a
feminine voice. "Mr. Melroy, Dr. Rives is here."

Melroy picked up the handphone, thumbing on the switch.

"Dr. Rives?" he repeated.

"The psychologist who's subbing for Dr. von Heydenreich," the box told
him patiently.

"Oh, yes. Show him in," Melroy said.

"Right away, Mr. Melroy," the box replied.

* * * * *

Replacing the handphone, Melroy wondered, for a moment, why there had
been a hint of suppressed amusement in his secretary's voice. Then the
door opened and he stopped wondering. Dr. Rives wasn't a him; she was a
her. Very attractive looking her, too--dark hair and eyes, rather
long-oval features, clear, lightly tanned complexion, bright red
lipstick put on with a micrometric exactitude that any engineer could
appreciate. She was tall, within four inches of his own six-foot mark,
and she wore a black tailored outfit, perfectly plain, which had
probably cost around five hund